When a friend dies, I never say I’ve lost a friend.
No, they’re still my friend. I just won’t hear from them quite as often as I used to.
And it’s even more unlikely that I’ll get back that five bucks they owed me.
As for friends you lose because they’re not your friends anymore, well, were they ever really your friend?
If that friendship was so weak that it took something less than death to end, then it wasn’t a true friendship.
So take my advice: if you want to keep your friends forever, kill them all right now.
Tag: commentary
Too Big
I’m too fat to use the stairs and you can’t always depend on elevators working, so I always live on the first floor.
“You should lose weight,” people tell me.
No shit. Really?
I can’t exercise because I’m too fat.
And I can’t diet because I’ve got other medical issues. I’ve spent days with the best nutritionists and doctors, but none could figure out how to reduce my intake without killing me.
So, I live down on the first floor.
And I haul myself from the van to my front door.
Soon, I’ll need a wheelchair.
A really big wheelchair.
Charity
I don’t give to charity anymore.
Once, I participated in a Fun Run to raise funds and awareness for some disease or another. Sure, it was fun, until I stopped running. That’s when the cattle prods came out, and I was aware… that I was in danger.
Then, I volunteered to be jailed so I could call my friends to “bail” me out with contributions to the Cancer Society. But the cops left me in jail. In Maximum Security.
So, I don’t care if there’s a tax deduction or a free t-shirt. It’s still too high a price to pay.
The Actor
A famous actor died last night.
I said famous, not good. He really wasn’t that good, but nobody’s saying that.
Out of respect for the dead, they say.
Because the dead deserve more respect that the truth.
Okay, I will admit that it’s a tragedy, because he left some big shoes to fill.
Oh, they’ll get filled. Certainly by a better actor. It won’t be hard at all, really.
A better actor will move up the ladder, on and on, until some Hollywood waiter gets an opportunity to follow his dream.
There’s the tragedy: service here is slow enough already.
Wedding Soup
While shopping for vegetable soup, I saw cans of Italian Wedding soup on the shelf.
Wedding soup? Don’t Italians have cake at weddings like everyone else?
Do cake topper brides and grooms float? Or do you strip them out of their clothes so they can skinny-dip in the soup?
The Italian Wedding soup? I thought that Minestrone was the “Italian” soup, but it turns out they serve that at divorces.
Italian Wedding soup is nothing but noodles and meatballs. Why not just call it noodles and meatballs?
Are gays and lesbians allowed to eat it?
I’ll stick to Vegetable, okay?
Dawn
Her name is Dawn, but she rarely wakes up before noon.
She’s a bartender in the busiest club in Chicago.
When she’s not serving drinks and trying not to fall out of what passes for a blouse, she’s out cold in her bed.
Guys ask for her number, and she’s always giving it to them. Well, she gives them the number she had before it was disconnected.
She never takes a night off, so the bar doesn’t call her in.
One night, she stays up to watch the sunrise. “How beautiful,” she says, and then she goes to sleep.
Negativity
After years of negative ads the citizens were so disgusted with politics that when Election Day rolled around, nobody showed up at the polls.
Not even the poll workers.
The media weren’t surprised at all, since they were so disgusted by the negativity, whoever hadn’t gotten time off for vacation or a faked-up medical emergency ended up chasing other stories besides the election.
Absentee ballots were completely absent.
Even the urban churches filled their buses with the faithful… and drove them to church to pray.
Washington and every state office was closed.
And people pretty much got along as normal.
Memory Of Jasmine
I love to light incense.
The more aromatic it is, the better.
I watch it twist and curl into the air, spreading trails in an alphabet only known to the gods and the mad fools who follow them.
Today, I light a stick of jasmine, and I can remember when our fence was covered with vines and white star blossoms.
The red tip glows brightly, consuming the incense slowly, dropping ash into the groove of the wooden holder.
And then, the tip goes dark.
The smoke trails vanish, and I’m left with the memory and scent of tiny white flowers.
Gremlins
The nurse told me that I can’t eat anything after midnight because I am having surgery early tomorrow.
But the truth is that I am a gremlin.
Feeding a gremlin after midnight turns them into an evil scaly predator that causes havoc and mayhem.
And getting a gremlin wet causes them to pop out warped clones.
I smile, close my eyes, and say “wet or dry, a sponge bath is a sponge bath.”
It’s certainly better than the food, which explains why there aren’t any evil scaly gremlins walking around causing havoc.
Or is it because visiting hours are over?
The Cord
When I arrived at the emergency room on Saturday, alone and helpless, my phone battery was dying.
My friends contacted the hospital gift shop, and by the time I reached my room, a spare charging cord was delivered.
That phone was my lifeline to family and friends.
On Monday, my mother-in-law arrived with my laptop, and I pulled out a spare cord from the laptop bag.
Just then, a careless orderly broke the gift cord.
It lasted just long enough to do its job, and then sacrificed itself so the orderly wouldn’t break anything else important, like my other arm.